San Sebastián's best restaurants

A new generation of master chefs are turning up the heat in Michelin-star-spangled San Sebastián in northern Spain. Tapas pro Paul Richardson reports.

San Sebastián is a beachside city with a global reputation as a foodie capital, Michelin stars in glittering abundance, and restaurants that routinely cram the upper echelons of any given shortlist, top 100, or blogger's ranking.

But beyond the gastro-temples, something is simmering. A new generation of chefs is coming to prominence, having been unjustly eclipsed by the fame (and the media firepower) of the old guard.

They are all born-and-bred Basques in their 30s with CVs that read like catalogues of the best kitchens in Spain and France. Their restaurants combine passionate cooking with an informal vibe. With the exception of one or two chicas, they are almost all young males. (Why this should be, in the city of world-class chef Elena Arzak, is a mystery.)

Here, we're talking 'triumph of the ingredient'. The new wave knows there can be no scrimping on Basque essentials such as first-class fish, wild mushrooms, eggs and vegetables from the family farm. What they care little about is high-flown technique for its own sake. Over-fancy, dressed-up food is so Noughties. I sense a new unclutteredness, an effort to sort out what really matters from that which is merely extraneous and pretentious.

The name refers to those morsels of gelatinous meat in the heads of certain fish species which, when cooked in a green sauce or lightly fried, send the Basques into paroxysms of pleasure.

Dani López (38), owner of Kokotxa along with his maître d' Estela Velasco (34), is one of San Sebastián's most intelligent cooks. Like all young chefs worth their salt, he worships at the altar of great raw materials. Halfway through my lunch, he calls me into the kitchen to inspect a whole tuna a fisherman friend has just lugged through the dining room in a plastic bag.

Time spent in Andalucía has given him a taste for gazpachuelo (a mayonnaise-enriched cold soup) and ajoblanco. Chinese and Japanese influences flow easily into the mix. Even the most elaborate creations seem somehow simple: roast lobster sitting on an emulsion of ajoblanco with pine nuts, a delicate whorl of rice noodles and a suggestion of blood orange to cut the richness.

After lunch, López sits at my table; he has a wide smile and more stubbly hair in his beard than on his handsome head. For the last six years, Kokotxa, on the fringes of Parte Vieja, has had one of the city's 16 Michelin stars, yet has been largely ignored by the global media. High time, then, for it to receive the attention it deserves.

Behind the golden sweep of La Concha beach is the world's least likely beachside restaurant, a destination for those who crave simplicity and the best ingredients treated with proper respect.

From 2007 to 2010 - the year the Wall Street Journal named Iñigo Peña (now 31) as one of 10 young European chefs to watch - Narru was based in the boho-chic Gros neighbourhood. Peña's new venue, in the basement of Hotel Niza, represents a symbolic move into the bourgeois heart of the city.

There's a vaguely Scandinavian feel to the room's polished-cement floors, in counterpoint to the original limestone pillars, and its retro wooden chairs upholstered in muted orange, blue and grey. The space, a former pizzeria, is cool and welcoming on a hot day when it seems like the whole city is heading for La Concha.

A kid from the old-school barrio of Antiguo, Peña did his time at Arzak, Mugaritz and Arbelaitz before putting his stripped-back take on cocina de producto into practice.

There is a rigour to this young man's cooking, a determination to create food that avoids complication and modishness at all costs. It takes courage to serve a dish as devastatingly simple as a sauté of spring mushrooms with a poached egg, or a hunk of fresh grouper (caught a few hours earlier) with nothing fancier than a slick of potato cream and a sofrito (sauce) of onion in olive oil.

We may be in northern Spain but this is still southern Europe and the family-run business rules OK. In 2007 the Ortega Añorga clan moved from their ancestral cider-house in Usurbil to a big home in the outskirts of Gros whose rough beams and darkened clay tiles make it look 100 years old, although, in fact, it was designed by an architect in the 1980s. Under husband and wife Javier and Ana Mari, Saltxipi became one of the neighbourhood's best-loved restaurants. It was, and still is, known for its spider crabs, which are kept in tanks in the basement.

Today their son Jon Ortega (35) is at the stove, grilling some sensational looking gambas. Upstairs in the dining room, his brother Gorka, in dressed-down jeans and trainers, brings me a bottle of white Remírez de Ganuza which, because it comes from the Rioja Alavesa he reminds me, is a wine as genuinely Basque as he is. A former footballer with the Real Madrid junior team, he looks 10 years fitter than his 38 years.

On a weekday evening the pretty, rustic room is quiet. Two elderly ladies in pearls and perms are dining with their nephew. At weekends, says Gorka, the place fills up with gangs of friends and thirty-something couples who follow Saltxipi's Facebook page. Above the fireplace is a portrait of Jon and Gorka's grandfather Santi in a black Basque beret: the patriarch.

The food is both marvellous and marvellously simple: a fresh crab salad, perfect croquetas (crunch on the outside, creaminess within), hake kokotxas (chins) in green sauce, and a memorable mamia - ewe's-milk curd tasting of the clay pot it was made in.

Next year, Jon and Gorka's parents will begin to step down and the generational takeover will start in earnest. The brothers' idea is to capitalise on what Saltxipi does superbly. There's a verdant terrace which Gorka plans to make into a cross between an English garden and an Ibizan chill-out haven. Other improvements include a greater emphasis on the chargrill, to which Jon already magisterially applies chunks of hake, monkfish and T-bone steaks, but also wants to use to cook clams and kokotxas.

Good food is good business, in San Sebastián as much as anywhere. And the IXO Group, the financial muscle behind such names as Mugaritz and Nerua at the Guggenheim Bilbao, is more than a going concern.

Chef Mikel Gallo is, in the best sense of the term, a company man: softly spoken, affable, with blue eyes as piercing as a filleting knife. Wearing long shorts and a funky T-shirt, he could almost be a surfer dude from nearby Zurriola beach.

Gallo, together with IXO Group chief Bixente Arrieta, is the creative genius behind one of the city's major culinary success stories of recent years. Ni Neu (it means 'me myself') is in one of San Sebastián's most enviable locations, on the corner of the luminous Kursaal building beside the Zurriola bridge. Gallo and Arrieta's big idea was to offer dynamic and zesty contemporary Basque cuisine that's both approachable and affordable. For about £25 you get a three-course menu - choose between five starters, nine mains and five desserts - which also includes water, bread and a glass of wine.

The downstairs dining room, once Martín Berasategui's Michelin-starred Kursaal restaurant, was given a design overhaul last year, leaving it dramatically, minimalistically black. It seems a mite forbidding for such an easy-going joint.

But all doubts vanish when you launch into your chosen menu of (in my case) the thinnest slices of roast beef with smoked watermelon and hazelnuts, baked hake with a jus of toasted fish skin and threads of aubergine. The dessert is the dish of which Gallo is most proud. He describes his smartened-up, impeccably made torrija (think of it as Spanish French toast) as 'the queen of the house'. It is succulent and sophisticated but not scarily so, and the bargain price is the icing on the cake, or the dressing on the carpaccio.

Gallo grew up in Andoain, a village 13km from San Sebastián, and worked at the Guggenheim restaurant during its first three years under Josean Alija. He exudes the contentment that comes from having a clear idea of where you come from and where you are headed. 'I'm proud of Ni Neu because here I'm finally doing what I always wanted to do,' he says.

The location - beside a flyover on busy Avenida de Tolosa - might be thought unpromising. But this little dining room with just 10 tables serves some of San Sebastián's most exciting food. And that, of course, is really saying something.

Chefs Aizpea Oihandeder (37) and Xabier Diez (39) aren't a couple, though they do have a daughter, Laia, and a restaurant together. Appearances can be deceptive: Xabi is gruff and grizzled, with tattoos and a hairy-biker look (he's a Harley man), yet he has the typical Basque combination of briskness and genuine warmth. From the narrow kitchen he peers into the dining room and waves at me.

Behind him I see Aizpea, short, dark hair tied in a band, busy at the stainless steel. The two friends met in the kitchen of Arzak in 1995. 'We're a tandem,' Aizpea tells me. 'We see things from the same point of view.'

Like most of their peers in the city, they've worked with the greats: Michel Bras, Martín Berasategui, Juan Mari Arzak. But after careers that included five years at Michelin-starred Monasterio del Rocamador in Extremadura, they wanted to go it alone and this locale in Ibaeta looked just right.

Xarma also takes modernity in its stride. Strands of tradition in the form of local ingredients (pigeon, apples, cheese) run alongside contemporary currents. I loved the velvety white-asparagus ice cream, flavoured with crisp ham breadcrumbs. It says something that the chefs' take on the Portuguese bacalao a la dorada, with a creamy cod brandade and a bonbon of smoky pumpkin posing as egg yolk, improves substantially on the original dish. 'The age of the mega restaurant has passed - now it's all about survival,' says Xabi. 'My only responsibility is to make people happy.'

Xarma, Avenida de Tolosa 123, San Sebastián, Spain (+34 943 317162; www.xarmajatetxea.com). About £80 for two

ARZAK The classic among classics and a San Sebastián institution. Juan Mari Arzak is the James Brown of the new Spanish cooking, and his eponymous restaurant is the godfather of El Bulli. What began life in 1897 as a tavern under Escolástica Lete, his grandmother, is now among the world's top-flight eating places, with three Michelin stars since 1989. Arzak has always been a Basque restaurant first and foremost, and the soul of its menu is traditional cooking. However, neither Juan Mari nor his daughter Elena, voted the world's greatest female chef last year, have ever been afraid of modernity. Which means you might be served pigeon with hibiscus flowers, manioc and huitlacoche mushroom puff with a light onion and foie gras mousse, and find yourself gazing at an LCD screen with flickering images under your plate.

San Sebastián's star restaurants: AKELARE [/b] Pedro Subijana, recognisable by his unconscionable moustache, has been part of the city's culinary firmament for so long it's easy to forget that he was one of its earliest and brightest stars. His restaurant's setting, high on Igueldo hill with views of countryside and ocean, is peerless. And the cuisine is a distillation of Subijana's half century of experience, tempering classicism with creativity and wit. Various menus provide distinct experiences: among the Classics of Akelaŕe you'll find renowned dishes such as egg and caviar with cauliflower purée and chive butter, and lobster salad with cider vinegar. Jardín Marino is a multi-course aperitif brilliantly evoking the intense aromas of the sea. And the Menú Bekarki, an extravaganza running from spider crab, foie gras, turbot and cod to ox steaks and cheese, is a heartfelt homage to the Basque landscapes beyond the panoramic window.

San Sebastián's star restaurants: MUGARITZ [/b] There is no gainsaying the brilliance of chef Andoni Luis Aduriz. In the absence of El Bulli, this restaurant in a Basque farmhouse in rolling countryside a few miles outside San Sebastián is now Spain's de facto cathedral of contemporary cuisine. Luis (his surname) is an investigator whose creations, such as white asparagus sprinkled with chrysanthemum, reflect his ruminations on the natural world, beginning with the woods and mountains of his beloved Basque Country. Mugaritz is a revolutionary restaurant in many ways but 15 years after it opened, it already gives off the aroma of a great classic. Expect to be thrilled, occasionally mystified and always entertained by the 20-course menú degustación. And don't make plans for the rest of the evening.

Best for basque snacks: ANDRA MARI & CO Gros is the barrio that's shaping up as San Sebastián's newest gastronomic hub. Pintxo pros make the journey down teeming Calle Zabaleta to this contemporary bar, resplendent in the slate-and-chrome look currently popular in the city. Andra Mari is regarded as the birthplace of the gastronomic pintxo and the examples at this new incarnation of the bar are creative and strikingly delicious: asparagus in tempura with romesco sauce; patatas bravas revisited; foie-gras cake with chargrilled vegetables. A Pacific-Rim influence is seen in the dumplings, Peruvian tiradito and sweet ningyo-yaki.

Best for basque snacks:TXUBILLO The sign, written in the old Basque-style typography, directs you down an alley off Calle Matia. Txubillo was a basement bodega until a couple of Japanese foodies (and students at San Sebastián's prestigious Luis Irizar culinary academy) got their hands on it. Now the old bar offers Japano-Basque fusion pintxos such as salad of udon noodles with gazpacho, tempura of Basque green chillies, foie gras with teriyaki sauce and buta no kakuni (a slab of pancetta meltingly slow-cooked in miso). Txubillo was where I discovered just how well a crisp local txakoli wine from Txomin Etxaniz could go with perfect maki sushi.

Best for basque snacks: CASA VALLES Heaven, I'm in heaven at this terrific old bar in the downtown area where the floors are littered with napkins and scattered with sawdust in the time-honoured but increasingly frowned-upon Spanish style. Founded in 1942, Casa Vallés has seen innumerable vicissitudes, including two disastrous blazes in 1976 and 1986. The gilda is supposed to have been invented here. True or false, this classic Basque aperitif item, combining a hot green pepper, an olive and an anchovy on a cocktail stick, begs to be tried. As do the Cantabrian anchovies, the stuffed and deep-fried mussels, the prawns en gabardina and the pigs' cheeks in tomato sauce.

Best for basque snacks:ITURRIOZ The city's recent fondness for monochrome, minimalist design in its pintxo places has surely reached saturation point. At least Iturrioz, under the arches opposite the Church of the Good Shepherd, offsets its chic interior and black-clad bar staff with a congenial atmosphere. Among the standard bread-based pintxos, the quail's egg with anchovy and the confit of salt cod are outstanding. The pintxos de cocina (cooked pintxos) include stuffed asparagus, mackerel with sherry vinegar and scallop a la plancha. As a change from Rioja, drink German wines or a sangria made from local txakoli.

Best for basque snacks:VINOTECO BERNARDINA As its name implies, Antiguo (old) was San Sebastián's original residential nucleus, now it's an up-and-coming barrio with eating opportunities to match. This vinoteca is an upmarket spin on the old-town pintxo bar with a certain style in the bare brick walls and plate-glass windows. Local ladies-who-lunch and daddies-who-dine are drawn here for the fabulous hams and sausages from Joselito, renowned as Spain's leading jamón producer. Unlike in the bars of Parte Vieja, there is plenty of space to relax over your glass of Rioja and pintxos of ensaladilla with salmon, mini hamburger of red tuna and crunchy prawn.

Best for basque snacks: ABAKANDO Another gastrobar beyond the Parte Vieja, this handsome locale is on a curve of the Avenida de Tolosa, with a fine outdoor terrace (rare enough in this city). Two years old this year, Abakando is part-owned by the owner of a seafood dealer and the marvellous shellfish here, from crabs and razorclams to lobster and scallops, is a good reason to drop in. The brochette of langoustines and bacon with vinaigrette is a winner, and the carpaccio of raw prawn with lemon and capers one of the best in the city. There are also well-chosen wines at reasonable prices.